The Church celebrates the feast of Ascension on the 40th day after the resurrection of our Lord from the dead. The Ascension feast is one of the seven Major Feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Ascension feast is where our Lord Jesus Christ ascended by His own divine power into heaven. He ascended in the flesh in a glorified manner to the highest heaven and sat on the right hand of the Father—at the right hand of the power of God.
After His resurrection from the dead and until the 39th day, our Lord Jesus Christ prepared His disciples for the ministry they were about to embark upon. They were taught the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven and were prepared to preach His life, works, doctrine, death, resurrection and to call out for the life of repentance and the coming of the Kingdom.
By His resurrection from the dead, Christ bestowed upon us the newness of life, which is the ability to live with God once more. He reconciled the Heavenly with the earthly and abolished the stigma of our fallen nature. By putting on the cloak of the human flesh, Christ altered man’s nature and lifted it up from the dunghills of sin, saturating it with His own metaphysical essence.
After His numerous apparitions to His disciples to prepare them for the path they were about to take, Christ ascended into Heaven to proclaim their spiritual maturity and their ability to inseminate His glory through their own service. Therefore, His ascension into Heaven marked the end of their training period and the beginning of their service. After His ascension, the remaining ten days until the completion of the Pentecostal season, the disciples prepared themselves for the receiving of the Holy Spirit by prayers and praises. After receiving the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, they preached the name of Christ to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
In truth, the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ into Heaven is a living proof of our own ascension, for our Lord has gone to prepare a place for us. Our ability to ascend was exemplified in His ascension into Heaven in the flesh. St. Paul the apostle writes, “He raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6).
The ascension of Christ grants THREE promises:
1) Receiving the Holy Spirit—“It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away the Helper will not come to you but if I depart I will send Him to you” (John 16:7).
2) The Second Coming—“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18).
3) Our Heavenly Inheritance—“And if I am lifted up from the earth will draw all peoples to Myself” (John 12:32).
In truth, this is the day where we ought to lift our eyes up towards Heaven, forsaking all immaterial and secular desires, gazing at the treasures of Heaven and longing for the eternal life that is to come.
